Board Members

Soryu Forall

Soryu Forall has spent over two decades in intensive contemplative practice. He was ordained in 1998 by Zen Master Taigen Shodo Harada, abbot of Sogen monastery in Okayama, Japan, where he trained for six years. He ran the Sariputta Monastery in Bijapur, India from 2002-2004 and has studied in monasteries throughout India, Tibet, and China. He has also trained in Native American traditions. Soryu’s teachings are primarily informed by Buddhism, Unified Mindfulness, the spiritual paths of the Lakota and Abenaki, and the Quaker tradition of Christianity. He has brought mindfulness and Buddhist teachings to tens of thousands of people through pioneering Modern Mindfulness for Schools, Mind the Music, and the Monastic Academy. He has taught in business, academic, interfaith, and one-on-one settings. He founded the Center for Mindful Learning in 2011, growing it to a broadly supported national nonprofit. He is the Head Teacher of the Monastic Academy in Vermont (MAPLE) and Head of CEDAR, the growing network of modern mindfulness monasteries including MAPLE, OAK in California, and Willow in Canada. He holds a degree in Economics and Environmental Science from Williams College.

Zak Stein

Zak Stein grew up on the East Coast of the US and managed to find a way through several school systems as a “high achieving dyslexic.” During doctoral training in psychology and philosophy at Harvard, he discovered the field of existential risk and has since dedicated his life to working on the resolution of the world’s most pressing problems.

Zak currently works as a writer, researcher, and thought leader at the front edge of understanding how educational systems and approaches are related to problems of civilizational collapse. He is also a consultant to governments and businesses seeking to mitigate catastrophic risks through educational innovation, as well as a mentor to individuals seeking to use their power responsibly. His work can be found at The Consilience Project, and at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion (formerly the Center for Integral Wisdom). His book Education in a Time Between Worlds has been widely acclaimed, considered by some as one of the most important books on the philosophy of education to be published this century.

He has been a longtime caregiver and musician, as well as a practitioner of both Zen and Jewish mysticism.

Maitrī Huffaker

Maitrī grew up in the suburbs of Southern California in a mixed Middle-Eastern / White family. Her first encounters with a spiritual world were through the framings of the Seventh-day Adventist church as a child, where as a child, she developed a relationship with a loving God. Impulses to move beyond her small suburban world and closed religious community took her to UC Berkeley for college, where she studied Anthropology. After a stint in the world of Corporate Social Impact (at eBay), she moved to Guatemala, where she devoted five years of life to community development work in projects devoted to health, education, and artisan market access in Indigenous communities. For her graduate research at the University of Oslo, a deep fascination with the interconnections between spirituality and global crisis lead her to explore the role of the Maya Cosmovision—the worldview of Indigenous Guatemalans—in climate change transformations. She joined the MAPLE community to more fully embody lifelong inquiries around what is true, what is Holy, and how to live a life worth living during a time of profound upheaval.